Pass
the Salt
You’ve been invited to dinner at a
friend’s home. The table is set, dinner is served. As you begin to
dine, it becomes clear the host used NO seasoning whatsoever—zero, zip,
nada—in the food preparation. You ask: “Can someone please pass the
salt?” The host responds: “We don’t have or use salt.” So you make a
mental note: “The next time I eat dinner here, I’ll be sure to bring my
own salt!”
This circumstance is hypothetical, and would probably never happen in
real life. But it's actually what’s happening in a place where
Jesus taught it should never happen—the Church. In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus taught: “Ye
are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but
to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men”
(Matthew 5:13).
The literal translation of “salt have lost its savour” is “salt having
been made tasteless (insipid).” The verb is passive voice, indicating
the salt is acted upon by outside forces to make it useless in terms of
spiritual impact.
In the mid-twentieth century, the concept of absolute truth, as
contained in scripture, began to be supplanted by higher textual
criticism, moral relativism. The church has since been assimilating the
world rather than following God’s design—a lost world coming to Christ
and assimilating HIS nature and character as revealed in scripture and
exhibited by his followers.
The insipid (good for nothing) church, or as Jesus described as the
“lukewarm” (vomit worthy) church—Revelation 3:16, is a practitioner of
assimilation in reverse. The Laodicean church had a very high opinion
of itself…an opinion NOT shared by Jesus. In making itself ‘relevant’
to the world, such a church robs the world of what it desperately
needs—SALT!
Unlike our imaginary guest who makes a ‘mental note’ to bring his own
salt to the next dinner invite, the world has no such option after
visiting an insipid, lukewarm church void of spiritual power.
There is perhaps no sadder commentary on the state of a nation than for
the world to be saying to the church, "Pass the salt!” and the church
having no salt to pass!
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